After covering running backs earlier this week, I’m finally moving on to a position that actually matters. There will be a handful of cornerbacks taken in the first round of this year’s draft, and even if I’m not sure this is a particularly elite group, there are several solid starters who should be able to help their new teams both in the near-term and for years down the line.
Ahmad Gardner, Cincinnati
Gardner is comfortably the best option at cornerback in this year’s draft, even if he falls a little short of being a truly elite prospect worthy of a top-five pick. He is a massive and physical cornerback, standing 6-2 with 33.5 inch arms, a frame that allows him to dominate receivers with press coverage. He played almost every snap in college right up at the line of scrimmage, and the majority of the time the receiver he was facing was never able to get out into his route. This was effective against smaller receivers who rely on quickness off the line, as well as tight ends that can overwhelm normal cornerbacks with their size and strength.
Despite his size and style, Gardner has decent fluidity if he has to play another way. If his initial jam misses the target, he’s able to spin his hips and run in the receiver’s hip pocket without much trouble. He can sometimes get a little off balance later in his jam, allowing receivers to break away and create a small throwing window. But his recovery speed is excellent, and he erases these opportunities not long after they appear.
The few complaints I have with Gardner are mostly nitpicks. He struggles some to negotiate traffic in the middle of the field on crossing routes and can end up well behind his receiver. He doesn’t have a lot of experience in zone coverage, though his awareness in situations where he isn’t in pure man suggests he could transition pretty easily to a role that asks him to do this. Probably my biggest questions are around his ball skills, mostly because I never really saw him tested. In the three games I watched him play the opposing offenses basically never looked his way, so I never got to see how he would respond against a receiver trying to make a contested catch. He may very well be excellent here too, but it’s enough to make me a little wary about his prospects of becoming a true star in the NFL.
Derek Stingley, LSU
Stingley is the wild card in this year’s cornerback class. Three years ago as a freshman he was arguably the best cornerback in college football, as he pulled down six interceptions for the LSU team that went on to claim a national title. Only a freshman at the time, it seemed almost inevitable that he would end up being a top five selection when he was finally eligible for the draft. He was a tremendous athlete with otherworldly ball skills who would only get better as he got more experience under his belt.
The two years that followed were not what anyone could have hoped for. He only played in seven games in 2020 and only three in 2021, hampered by a series of injuries. And as troubling as that injury history is, his play when he was on the field is even more of an issue. He still showed excellent burst in small doses, but he struggled to move laterally and at times was exploited over the top. He didn’t pull down a single interception in either season, and we’re now two full years removed from him looking like an elite prospect.
At this point it’s really hard to know what we will get from Stingley going forward. Were his struggles these past couple years due only to injuries limiting him, or is he showing flaws that were more easily covered up his freshman year? Was he just disinterested once he felt he had proved himself to scouts and was no longer playing for a team with national title aspirations? The tape he showed as a freshman was better than anything any other cornerback in this class has put up, while the tape he showed the last two years wasn’t worth a pick before the third round. I’d be okay with that gamble in the middle of the first round, but it definitely comes with a risk of a complete bust.
Trent McDuffie, Washington
McDuffie is a difficult evaluation because, while I liked most of what I saw from him, I really didn’t see that much. Like Gardner, he was pretty much never targeted, as offenses knew he was the top opposing cornerback and designed every play to go away from him. Unlike Gardner, the techniques he played in coverage did very little to show off his skills. Mostly his responsibility seemed to be avoiding getting beaten over the top, which led to a lot of off coverage or quick bails when he was walked up to the line. He showed some ability to slam on the brakes and good closing speed to come downhill when he saw the receiver stop in front of him, but I feel like there were opportunities there that teams in college just didn’t bother taking advantage of.
McDuffie is a similar puzzle from a physical perspective. Most of the time he isn’t pushing himself on the field, so it’s hard to know what to make of him as an athlete. There are moments where he explodes and shows exciting athleticism, but they are infrequent enough to raise some questions. He tested well in his pre-draft workouts, at least for the drills he participated in, which didn’t include the agility tests. This was a bit puzzling, since those are the drills I would have guessed he’d be best at based on the way he moves on the field. The fact that he opted out of them makes me question what I thought watching his tape.
So put this all together and it’s really hard to know what sort of pro he’s going to be. He never showed any physicality at the line, and with his small stature I think that’s likely to remain absent from his game at the next level. The size is a potential concern at the catch point, particularly with his short arms, but I never actually saw him in a contested catch scenario in college, so it’s hard to know how he plays the ball. NFL teams will have the opportunity to put him through drills to test these things, but unfortunately I don’t have that luxury. Which is why I would hesitate to draft him in the top twenty, even though he looks like a skilled, athletic, and clean prospect from everything I’ve seen, and in theory he has the potential to develop into one of the best in the game.
Andrew Booth, Clemson
There isn’t really one thing that Booth does at an elite level. He is just about average sized, and he doesn’t play with much physicality, aside from occasional chucks to slightly disrupt timing. A couple of injuries have prevented him from testing in the leadup the draft, so we don’t have good athletic numbers for him, but he looks just a little better than average on the field. He moves well and plays with really good balance, but he can be beaten over the top, and when he makes a mistake he doesn’t possess special closing speed to shut down the windows in front of him.
The lack of any one elite skill will limit his ceiling in the NFL, and it makes it hard to justify selecting him in the top twenty. But the lack of any clear weakness means he’ll be a solid starter, which is enough to get him into the early part of the second round. Balance is the best thing Booth has going for him, and it’s the most valuable trait for a cornerback to have. He doesn’t bite on double-moves, and he doesn’t get badly burned by sharp-breaking routes in front of him. He’ll leave windows available that opposing quarterbacks can hit if they are on time and accurate, but he’ll usually be in position to avoid making things too easy and to prevent big gains.
Booth played almost exclusively on the outside in college, but he has the skillset to bounce inside and play in the slot in the NFL. He’s very aggressive in run support, even if he’s slightly clumsy as a tackler and doesn’t always make the most of his opportunities. He’s versatile enough to play in just about any scheme, but he’s probably better suited as a number two cornerback who can get lots of help from a safety than as a number one with the entire defense counting on him to lock down the receiver in front of him.
Kaiir Elam, Florida
Elam is the project of this year’s cornerback class. He’s one of the youngest of all these players, only 20 years of age, and on the field he looks like the best athlete among them too. He has a long frame and moves very well with it, always under control and never off-balance. He doesn’t get beaten over the top, and he’s able to chase down elite receivers on crossing routes to either make a play on the ball or tackle them for no gain.
Of course, there are a lot of flaws that need fixed in his game. As big as he is you’d expect him to excel in press coverage, but he really never threatened receivers physically at the college level. When he did walk up and try to press them, he had a habit of grabbing hold and drawing flags that will only be more common in the NFL. He doesn’t seem to have a great understanding of routes, failing to anticipate where receivers are headed in both man and zone schemes. And when the ball does come his way, his athleticism sometimes seems to vanish at the point of the catch, as he never really displays the closing speed I’d expect from someone who moves so well.
The interesting thing about Elam is that he didn’t test as the superstar athlete he looks like on the field. He did pretty good in most of his measurables, but nothing that will blow you away and make you think he has the potential to be a real shutdown cornerback if he rounds out his game. The conflicting tape and tests are concerning, and this ends any thought I’d have of taking him in the first round. I’d be interested in gambling on the upside in round two, but it does seem like this project comes with very significant downside risk.
Kyler Gordon, Washington
Gordon has some of the same issues I discussed with his teammate McDuffie. The scheme he was asked to play in was fairly passive, and the offenses I saw him face didn’t do a lot of complicated stuff on the outside. Gordon did play a bit more aggressively than his teammate, and opposing teams were more comfortable attacking him, which means I have a bit more to go on. But I still have some questions about him that would make me reluctant to feel too certain about his NFL future.
On the field Gordon looks and plays like a big, lanky cornerback, though when he was measured at the Combine he came out fairly average in size. This might make it difficult at the next level to play his preferred technique of dropping into the receiver’s hip and playing from behind, trusting his length to let him close down the window over the top. He didn’t test as fast as he appears on the field either, which might be a reason to be concerned that he could struggle more against elite NFL speed than he did in college where he was mostly able to run down any mistake.
Gordon is interesting to watch off the snap. He spent a lot of time in college walked up right in the receiver’s face, but he basically never tried to actually put his hands on his opponent. He has the physical skills where I can imagine him becoming a good press cornerback, but right now that isn’t in his toolset. But he does a good job reacting to moves the receivers try to put on him off the line, and he’s almost always able to turn and run in whatever direction the receiver breaks. This is despite some occasionally sloppy technique that can leave him in awkward positions with his hips turned the wrong way or his shoulders not= over his feet. The fact that he can recover from this suggests some impressive underlying athleticism, but it is something he’ll have to improve on in the NFL.
There are some sloppy parts of Gordon’s game, and some questions he needs to answer. On the field he looks like an elite athlete, and the fact that his testing didn’t back that up is concerning. I think he’ll probably develop into a solid starter, but there’s enough bust potential that I would still think long and hard about taking him before the second round.
Roger McCreary, Auburn
McCreary is the worst athlete of the cornerbacks I looked at, and he also has the worst tape. I’m honestly not sure how he ever ended up getting first round buzz, and even if that’s faded somewhat in recent weeks, he still seems overvalued as a likely second rounder. He definitely doesn’t have the skill to be a number one cornerback, and I’m not convinced he even has what it takes to be a regular starter.
McCreary is decent when he is able to simply turn and run vertically down the field. His 4.46 time in the forty won’t blow anyone away, but he’s usually able to keep up with the receiver he’s expected to cover. He squeezes the sideline well, and he doesn’t bite on double-moves. He’ll have some trouble at the catch point as he struggles to get his head around to play the ball, but he mostly has the right instincts for how to play the receiver without drawing a penalty.
It's a different story if he is ever asked to change direction or to move laterally. He tested as below-average in both the 3-cone drill and the short shuttle, and he honestly looked worse than his times on the field. Receivers have no trouble breaking him down and crossing his face, and when they do he doesn’t have the burst needed to catch up. And at times he can lose his balance completely, letting the receiver go unchallenged with a simple cut in front of him. He played in the slot some in college, but there is no chance he lasts there in the NFL, and the best case scenario for him is finding a team that plays a fairly vanilla cover-3 scheme and lets him focus only on what he does best.
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